Having told you yesterday (Wed) that I have been and am still sick and hoping for scores of emails expressing sympathy or various ‘jungle’ remedies to cure me or even poison me, I then read of a government employee who was (and maybe still is) sick.

The head of insurance at the Cayman Islands Monetary Authority (CIMA), Gordon Rowell, has been on sick leave for more than six months!

How awful. The poor man. Here I am complaining I have been sick for nearly two weeks and Mr. Rowell has suffered a similar fate for over 6 months.

I have backs of both hands punctured with tiny wounds from the needles that have been inserted into me and an even worse one on my bum (that still hurts).

Can you imagine the state of this poor man’s body if he has had to endure similar treatment for six months?

I have tried to locate Mr. Rowell but no one seems to know where he is, although he has been, at our expense, drawing a full salary whilst on sick leave.

Until now.

The CIMA have just announced our sickly insurance head has lost his job. Yes officials have confirmed his employment with the authority has formally ended.

Did you all know that the CIMA has been running its insurance department without a head all this time?

Could you feel that something was not right?

Or was our sickly friend still keeping tabs on things, using the Internet, whenever he could find the energy his sick body could muster, to steer the ship through Cayman’s treacherous waters?

If he did he certainly has justified his continuing salary.

His job has been very difficult to replace. With no one securely at the helm over these past six months, the CIMA have had to temporarily replace Mr. Rowell with its former head, Morag Nicol, for three months until a permanent replacement can be found.

M/s Nicol originally held the position during 2006/07 but had worked for the department from 1998. She is also going to assist in finding the new boss.

However, this may be no easy task. The job caused Mr. Rowell to be sick for six months, or was he just sick of the job?

Do we know what his actual sickness was? Does he still have it? Surely, we the public, who pay his sick leave salary have the right to know?

Don’t be silly, Colin, of course we don’t.

Sick leave is just that. Sick!

See iNews Cayman story today “Former Head of Insurance Supervision Division at the Cayman Islands Monetary Authority rejoins in Acting Capacity” under iNews Briefs.